*AMWC Disclaimer: These plans are recommendations based solely on what worked for me. Different things work for different people! Be sure to check with your doctor before following any new weight-loss or fitness regimens.
Body For Life:
I had this book lying around and a personal trainer years ago told me he used this and it worked, so I tried it. This was basically pairing healthy whole grains and proteins for 5-6 small meals daily, with one day off where you can eat anything you want. Yes! Anything! A day of only Big Macs if you want. Anything. I was always full and I never felt like I was giving anything up. I got creative with pairing up my carbs and proteins and I was able to sub in some Body For Life, Myoplex Lite bars and shakes for some of the meals (sometimes I would do 3 meals and 2 bars or shakes). The Body for Life book also explains your cardio and strength workouts to you in detail and in my own opinion, I couldn't lose weight without doing all three, the trifecta: cardio, strength and eating right. So I inserted the Couch to 5k workouts into the Body for Life workouts and vice versa and made myself a plan.
Spark People (http://www.sparkpeople.com/): A free plan online! I get really bored really easily, so I had to mix things up when it came to my food. This plan is all about counting calories and the site helps you with your calorie counting, it has a big huge bank of foods and when you log your food, the site helps you count the calories. You can also add in your own foods. It also has awesome recipes and helps you count the calories in the recipes that you make. This was a true eye opener for me. I learned so much about counting calories, I learned about how quickly calories add up when I'm not looking and how much mindless eating I was doing. Basically, this helped me pin down some dirty little habits I had (like going to Auntie Anne's EVERY TIME I went to the mall. For no reason! It wasn't like I was hungry or anything!) It also taught me how to log calories while dining out at restaurants (and how annoying it was that a lot of restaurants treat you like an idiot when you ask for the calories for items on their menus!)
Weight Watchers:
After losing almost 40 pounds and being stuck on the last 10-15, I moved on and tried Weight Watchers. Oh.My.Goodness. I am a believer! I chose to do it online rather than the meetings, but you log your food online and each food you eat is a certain amount of points. You have to be a member to use their online database, but it is not very expensive at all. You are alotted a certain number of points daily based on your weight and exercise level and if you go over your points, you get a weekly allowance to dip into. You also get extra points for the amount of "activity" you do because you also log your activity. You can certainly lose weight on this plan without working out, which may be a plus for some people, but it was a triple bonus for me because I got lots of extra points for working out. The online database helps you spell out how many points are in each food and there are apps for your phone where you can log it on your phone if you want. Light beer is 2 points. But the 65 calorie Beck's Light is just 1. I'm just sayin.
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